Last night I did something on a whim that I’ve never done before. I shaved my eyebrows off. Completely. I figured they’ll grow back in a couple of weeks. It makes it easier to draw them on while I am experimenting with finding a light enough brow color to wear. My brows are getting more sparse as time goes on, and I’ve been wearing brow color at times to define them. Even using the lightest shades, I end up looking like Joan Crawford because my natural brows are so high and wide. In the 90′s, a hairdresser friend wanted to wax my brows, so I let her. I figured they would grow back. Well, they really didn’t. The good news is I only have to tweeze about 6 stray hairs every few months. The bad news is that she waxed so much underneath the brows that they have ever after been the thinner brow that I don’t care for. But I’ve gotten used to it and it’s no big deal. By age 55 they began coming in again.
I watched a few YouTube videos showing how to create a nice eyebrow. When I fill them in freehand following the natural curve, they don’t match and it’s noticeable since I wear my hair off my face. I bought a set of eyebrow stencils and for the first time ever I had matching brows. It was kind of neat, but the color was too heavy for beige me. Plus, matching eyebrows is weird. Eyebrows should be sisters but not twins.
I tried a few lighter colors and finally gave up. I needed to see the eyebrows from a new perspective. Hence the decision to shave them off. But apparently, even with my eyebrows gone, my eyebrow muscles give the appearance of brows so there didn’t seem to be much change in my appearance. My face is very animated as I talk and I raise my eyebrows a lot. Being right handed I apparently raise the right more often than the left, hence the brows not matching if I follow my natural curvature.
Being shaved off made it a lot easier to draw them on and get them even, without having to deal with my own brows being in the way of the art. When I looked at my face as a blank canvas, it became clear what I should do. So now I’ll find a shape that fits them best and then as they begin to grow back, I will reshape them with tweezers as needed.
I can’t see myself drawing brows on for the rest of my life. I grew up watching my mom do that. She had nice heavy brows but would pluck the ends out as a nervous habit and so she always had to paint the ends on. She had dark hair and olive skin, so you could not really tell they were painted on. Me, being the beige one, you can tell.
I’ll keep you posted. I posted on Facebook last night when I did it, and got lots of funny comments back. Then I woke up this morning and had forgotten I’d done it. I wrote “Good grief, on what planet was that a good idea?” My friend Larry Cox sent me these:
Ode to an Eyebrow
At fifteen she learned
about eyebrows.
They can let you into,
…or keep you out of secrets.
Thoughts are upper-lined
by eyebrows.
When she was sixteen
she began
plucking hers,
thin.
Nowadays she hides
them behind a deep fringe.
Just in case she becomes famous,
called to give witness
she understands
eyebrows are best
hidden, like the bruise
on her face.
~ Cumin
“And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. ”
~ Christopher Marlowe better known as William Shakespeare